


close, closer, to her own heart

by kickedshins



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Could Be Canon, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Post-Episode: s01e06 FZZT, Season/Series 01, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29169216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: “I just… I wanted to make sure you were alright,” he repeats weakly.Jemma puts her hand on his knee, rubbing over it slowly and semi-forcefully with her thumb. The pressure is grounding. “I am,” she says.“You’re not, though,” Fitz insists, which was not the right thing to say, clearly, because her face screws up as if she’s eaten something sour. “I just mean,” he’s quick to correct himself, “that if you’re not, you can, you know, talk to me about it, or– or something,” he trails off, a bit lamely. Jemma seems to understand what he means, though.She hums lightly, and then settles against him. He’s not much taller than she is, and he’s certainly no broader, so she doesn’t fit under his chin and into the hollow of his stomach in a way that’s at all close to the platonic ideal of human puzzle pieces, but that’s alright. He wouldn’t want her to feel small against him, not ever.orFitz and Simmons talk more following Simmons' near-death from both an alien virus and jumping out of the cargo hold.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	close, closer, to her own heart

**Author's Note:**

> hi! im six episodes into aos and already the fitzsimmons brainworms are SEVERE. here's a little post-1x06 fic. enjoy!

Fitz lies stiff as an unusually twitchy corpse on his bed, staring up at the ceiling of the plane. He hasn’t been off of the Bus in… in way too long, honestly, because despite the fact that it’s a big space with a lot of pacing room, it’s still very firmly indoors, and sometimes he needs to take a nice stroll outside. The rumors are untrue; scientists are not, in fact, all sunlight-loathing vampires.

But he didn’t want to deplane at the Sandbox, which Coulson seemed to implicitly understand, and they’re not touching down in _wherever_ to do _whatever_ for another seven hours, so the team is getting some well-deserved, much-needed shuteye.

Or, most of the team, that is.

May’s up—does she ever sleep? Fitz is about ten percent attracted to her, but a hundred percent terrified of her, so he’d never ask—probably, flying the ship, and when May’s up, Coulson’s liable to be up, too. Fitz can hear Skye tossing and turning in the bunk next to his, and not in the way she tends to toss and turn and sometimes even talk in her sleep. She’s a light sleeper, but this isn’t light sleeper noise. This is awake person noise. Ward is… Fitz doesn’t know, honestly. Maybe he’s working out. Maybe he’s asleep. Maybe he’s doing other things, though Fitz isn’t positive that Ward has any modes on the Bus other than work out and sleep. And sort of do whatever he does with Skye, Fitz supposes, but 1) Fitz doesn’t want to think about that 2) Fitz is sure he’d hear them chatting if Ward was in Skye’s sort-of-room 3) again, Fitz doesn’t want to think about that.

And Jemma—

So maybe the whole team is awake. There’s a high probability of that. That’s the worst-case scenario, though, because Fitz gets mildly stressed out by the knowledge that there are other people existing in other places on the ship, which is borderline insane of him, but whatever. He just likes to know that everything’s okay. Also because Fitz is maybe three seconds away from getting out of bed to check on Jemma, and if he bumps into someone on the way there, he might actually throw himself out of the cargo hold.

 _Nope_ , he thinks. _Bad joke. Too soon._

There’s also the possibility that everyone’s asleep. Maybe Skye’s just restless tonight. Maybe the plane’s on autopilot and May’s asleep and Coulson is, too. Maybe Ward is tucked in under his covers—which, okay, that’s a strange (and admittedly not too unpleasant in a humorous sort of way; the idea of Ward curled up like a child or a small woodland creature is amusing and dissonant and not the point right now) mental image—and maybe Jemma is asleep, too.

She’s not. Fitz knows her better than that. 

Neither of them are particularly strong sleepers, and not in the way Skye tends to be a not-so-particularly-strong sleeper. Skye clearly has had to learn how to sleep light, how to wake up at a second’s notice and be ready to go, how to blink bleariness from her eyes in a heartbeat. Skye has had to sleep light to stay safe. Fitz-Simmons just trained themselves into functioning on nothing but caffeine during their years in school and the Academy, and habits like those prove pretty difficult to break.

And also Jemma almost died less than twenty-four hours ago. Which technically wouldn’t be the first time—Fitz thinks that maybe, just maybe, he and Jemma made a very big mistake agreeing to go into fieldwork, considering the fact that at this point, if someone held a loaded gun at either of them, they’d probably just cry, or pass out from fear, or something—that something like that has happened, but it’s the first time that the honor of very nearly dying was bestowed upon her and only her. Everyone else would have been safe; everyone else would have survived; everyone else would have said _oh, what a shame, we lost a brilliant mind_ , and would have gone on their way.

The walls press in a little tighter. Fitz sits up and shakes out his hands, onetwothreefour, until he feels a bit more inside his body again.

A brilliant mind. It’s frustrating. Enraging, really. Because that’s what she is to the team. That’s what she is to Coulson, and that’s what she is to S.H.I.E.L.D. A scientist, a meat bag in a lab coat, a fountain of jargon. A textbook on legs with defter-than-average fingers that could handle the finer points of working in a lab and a faster-than-average ability to recite the pages upon pages of near-unparseable information stored within. She could have died and they all would have been so sorry for the loss of what she knew. Not who she was.

And they all would have gone on. And Fitz… he doesn’t know.

The coverings of his bed have been partially pulled off. When did he do that? It’s going to be a bit of a bitch to get the fitted sheet back over the mattress, and now his frustration is compounding exponentially, and he should probably get a glass of water or something stronger before he goes insane from a combination of being stir-crazy, having a mess of feelings inside of him with no idea of how to process to them, and the fact that he and Jemma really haven’t said more than a few sentences to each other since she jumped out of a fucking plane in an attempt to kill herself and save everyone else.

It would have been his fault. It was in the second that he turned his back that she knocked him out. He has to know to never turn his back on Jemma Simmons again; he has to know that even if she’s capable, even if she’s one of the most capable people he has ever met in his entire life, she’s still human, and she can still take a long, long fall if there’s nobody there to catch her. Or, better yet, to hold her back.

The rational part of his brain tells him that there’s no use fretting over this, because Jemma _didn’t_ die and it _wasn’t_ his fault and everything’s okay. And the less rational part of his brain tells him that the rational part does enough work during the day and should probably take a rest during the night, which he thinks is decently sound logic.

Fitz didn’t jump after her. And, sure, maybe he “doesn’t know how to parachute”, but he doesn’t think he’s being dramatic by saying that a life without Jemma is no life at all. Probably better to hit the water at breakneck speed with her and get his head eternally twisted into a smile than it would have been to frown through each day without her.

The plane shifts slightly, almost imperceptibly, underneath him. Fitz tries his best to avoid keeping things around him that might roll away, but sometimes he’s not the best at keeping his room organized, and a stray, half-full water bottle ends up rolling out from who-knows-where and hitting against the closed sliding door that blockades Fitz from the rest of the Bus.

He hauls himself out of bed, pulse hammering in his wrists, in his throat, as he reaches up and touches the spot on his cheek that Jemma kissed all those hours ago. That was far from the first time she’s kissed his face, and it wasn’t even the closest she’s gotten to his mouth—she’s gotten pretty close with goodnight cheek pecks after staying-up-until-three-and-writing-research-papers sessions, and she’s gotten pretty close with sloppy expressions of affection after a few drinks, though never has she landed on his lips entirely—but he still feels it burning on his face like a miniature sun. 

After a second of seized-up stillness, he shakes his head and grabs the water bottle, and then spends a mortifyingly long amount of time wrestling with his fitted sheet. He finally manages to get it pulled back around the corner of the mattress, though, and now that he’s standing, he thinks maybe he should go get one of those drinks he was contemplating earlier, so he heads out towards the kitchen area. Except he really wants to go talk to his best friend, and he should not do that while even a little inebriated, and he’d have water but he’d feel bad getting a new water bottle instead of finishing this old one (he doesn’t like to drink water out of plastic water bottles once the water has gone warm. It feels tainted.), so he instead he pulls from the fridge a can of ginger ale.

Fitz finds a place on one of the comfortable couches that litter the relaxation area of the Bus. He balloons his cheeks full of air and exhales through his teeth in tandem with the _clickpophiss_ of the can opening, letting out an audible _whoosh_.

A short laugh comes from above him. He looks up, part of him full of dread and expecting it to be Skye on the restless prowl and ready to make fun of him, a larger part of him recognizing who the sound belongs to as instantly and naturally as blinking. “Jemma,” he says.

She’s smiling softly. Her face is bare of makeup, and her hair, down, falls just past her shoulders. There’s a crease in it from her ponytail holder. She’s wearing an oversized t-shirt that’s falling off of one shoulder and sweatpants, and though Fitz himself is in basically the same attire, she pulls it off much better. “Fitz,” Jemma says to him. “Hi.”

“W– well, come sit down,” he’s quick to say, scooting to the side and patting the seat next to him, and _Jesus_ , she saw him making toddler noises at his can of toddler drink, fuck. 

She obliges, settling herself down next to him with more lightness and grace than she typically employs around him. Than she typically employs around anyone, really, but it’s nice to think of himself as a separate category entirely when it comes to Jemma Simmons. 

They’ve gone longer than a day without talking to each other before—with best friendship comes the rare dramatic interpersonal nuclear blowup that results in the silent treatment for two weeks—but this is different. She almost died and they haven’t discussed it beyond a quick conversation that they had shortly after Ward set her back down safely on the Bus. She almost died _twice_ , and they’ve only just barely scratched the surface of discussing one of those times. Fitz can’t imagine the toll it must have taken on her to try and find a cure for her own alien illness with the knowledge that it was actively killing her pressing on her mind with greater and greater force as the seconds ticked by.

“How are you?” she asks, and Fitz is so delighted that they’re talking that it takes him a second to be as properly baffled and incredulous as the situation demands.

“How am _I_ ?” he says. “Simmons, how the hell am _I_?”

She nods politely. “You alright there?”

“You nearly fucking died,” he says. “Twice.” And then he winces at his sheer tactlessness, because he truly wanted to come at this from a bit of a softer angle, but also he’s not the best at coming at things from a softer angle a lot of the time, and she knows this about him, so he hopes it’s alright.

She sucks in her lower lip and chews at it for a second. After releasing it—shit, he’s not visibly looking at her lips, is he?—she tilts her head to the side and says, “I did.”

“Well,” Fitz says dumbly. “That’s… not ideal?”

“I’d argue it’s quite ideal,” Jemma counters, a smile glinting in her eyes. “ _Almost_ died is much bettter than _did_ die, after all.”

“Ideal is no death ever, nothing close to it, all of us very safe, thank you very much!” Fitz snaps back. He almost throws his hands up to emphasize his point, but he last-second remembers that he has a ginger ale in one hand, so he aborts his gesticulation mid-upwards-swing and instead stiltedly brings the can to his mouth to take a long, passionate sip.

“I do agree with you there,” Jemma obliges. “But also, I think that now that we’ve started to do more fieldwork, we—”

“Ach, screw that,” Fitz insists, giving her a pleading look. “I mean, no, don’t screw fieldwork, I just mean that that’s not what this is about. This is about how it’d’ve been nice to talk to you after tall, dark, and handsome—”

“Beg pardon?”

“—since bloody Ward rescued you from falling out of the damn sky, I was calling him that as an insult, it cleary did not scan as well out loud as it did in my brain, that is not the point, the point here is you’re my friend, Jemma, and I just wanted to make sure you were alright.” He finishes his tirade with a loud exhalation, the tension in his chest releasing with the force of a sink tap turned all the way on. “I just… I wanted to make sure you were alright,” he repeats weakly.

Jemma puts her hand on his knee, rubbing over it slowly and semi-forcefully with her thumb. The pressure is grounding. “I am,” she says.

“You’re not, though,” Fitz insists, which was not the right thing to say, clearly, because her face screws up as if she’s eaten something sour. “I just mean,” he’s quick to correct himself, “that if you’re not, you can, you know, talk to me about it, or– or something,” he trails off, a bit lamely. Jemma seems to understand what he means, though.

She hums lightly, and then settles against him. He’s not much taller than she is, and he’s certainly no broader, so she doesn’t fit under his chin and into the hollow of his stomach in a way that’s at all close to the platonic ideal of human puzzle pieces, but that’s alright. He wouldn’t want her to feel small against him, not ever.

“Careful of the ginger ale,” he tells her as her head bumps against his shoulder. “Wouldn’t want to spill on you.”

Fitz can feel Jemma’s eyelashes against his cheek as she glances up at him in what he prays is an expression of fondness and not annoyance. “I’ll be careful,” she says. “Very careful.”

She’s talking about something other than ginger ale. 

Fitz puts the drink down on the nearby coffee table and wraps an arm around her. She’s pressed up against his side, so close, but with her own arm in between her heart and his, so while Fitz is positive she can hear his pulse banging down the doors of the veins and arteries in his neck, he has no idea if she’s equally as on edge. She doesn’t seem to be, but she also doesn’t seem to be fazed by the whole almost-died-twice thing, so.

Jemma’s always been good at locking things away. It’s not healthy in the long run, but it’s short-term helpful in a way that Fitz’s own prone-to-panic nature is typically not. Right now, though, Fitz wants to make her unravel, make her unwind. He wants her to know that she can put all of her baggage down in the gulf between the couch and the table and let herself, held close to him, simply be.

“I’m glad to be here,” she says, which is a start.

“Well, I should hope so.”

Jemma reaches across and flicks the wrist of his that’s not currently bent around her body. “You know what I mean. I’m… it was certainly an experience. Like I said, it’s doubtful I’ll be going skydiving any time soon.”

“You were incredible,” Fitz tells her. “You know that, right? I mean, finding a vaccine—”

“Antiserum.”

“—yes, antiserum, sorry, for an alien virus within the span of two hours? While you were yourself suffering from said virus? Jemma, that’s amazing. I mean, I surely couldn’t have done it.”

“You couldn’t have made any antiserum ever, Fitz,” Jemma laughs. 

“Gee, thanks. I would think I’ve picked up enough biochem what-have-you from you over the years to be able to make an antiserum at _least_ once, but—”

“Thank you,” she cuts in. She shifts against him, her hair tickling his neck and her leg finding its way over his. “I was doing what I needed to in order to survive, but thank you.”

“And no one else could have done it,” he insists.

She weighs this for a second. “Yeah, possibly.”

“Therefore: incredible. Fair enough assessment?”

“If you’re already flattering me, I wouldn’t mind if you shot a little bit higher, to be honest,” Jemma says, and she’s probably joking, but she almost died and then didn’t talk to him for about a day, so he decides to take the literal route.

Fitz squeezes her a bit tighter. She’s solid and real and so very here in his arms. Or, well, arm, because he’s still not entirely ready to up the intimacy factor to full-on embrace. He’ll work up to it. He says, “Jemma Simmons, you were incredible. Are incredible. One-of-a-kind. The most brilliant biochemist I know.”

She chuckles a bit into his shoulder. “What, not the most brilliant scientist you know?”

He shrugs gently, careful not to jostle her hair. “I know some other pretty brilliant scientists, so—”

“Fitz,” she cuts him off, hitting him on the leg. “ _Thank you_. And, really, I’m doing fine. I appreciate that you’re looking out for me, and I appreciate that you’re concerned about my wellbeing, but—”

“Of course I’m concerned about your wellbeing!” Fitz all but explodes. He’s really going zero for zero tonight in terms of holding himself back. “Physically as well as, well, psychologically. I mean, _ha_ ,” he laughs breathlessly, fingers of his free hand drumming against the seat of the couch. “I have to imagine almost dying does a number on you. It– well, it _does_ do a number on you, speaking as someone who has gone on a grand total of very few field assignments and has been shot at multiple times before, which is many more times than I’d ever thought I’d be shot at in my life. You can– Jemma, you can be freaked out.”

She takes in a long, shaky breath before letting it out as steadily as anything. She says, “I was… scared. I was very scared. I know you think I’m a brilliant scientist—and, look, don’t get me wrong, I am—but it is partially just fortuitous that I was able to put together an antiserum in time. And it is entirely fortuitous that Ward was able to rescue me.”

“Bastard probably knows that if he’d let you die I would have killed him,” Fitz grumbles, to which Jemma gives him a placating pat on the knee and nuzzles her head against his shoulder. 

“So,” she says carefully, “I’m grateful to still be here. And I’ll be more grateful than I was before for a while.”

This is not at all the slapdash therapy session Fitz was hoping it could have become, but it’s also likely the best he can hope for tonight. After all, it’s probably alright for her to take some time to process everything before unpacking it. And he’s not at all qualified to give any sort of real professional help—actually, now that he thinks of it, does S.H.I.E.L.D.’s insurance cover therapy?—nor would he ever pretend to be able to do so.

He just wants Jemma to feel as safe and open with him as he feels he can be with her. And he understands that the two of them, despite how they’re often treated, are two different people, and that they each deal—or don’t deal—with their feelings in very different ways, but sometimes he thinks it would be easier if they really did just become one. That way, at least, he’d be able to make sure that their two halves of a whole were never at risk of splitting again.

But as sweetly overprotective as that thought is, Fitz knows that so much of why he adores Jemma are the differences between them. And if they could somehow magically become one—or, no, magic isn’t real and they know that, magic is just a word people use for science that hasn’t been explained yet, science that the two of them are more than eager to face head-on and press into the shape of something logical—Fitz knows he wouldn’t do it. He’d miss a lot of things: privacy, a blissful ignorance of the vast majority of biochem (which, bless Jemma, can be so very boring and confusing at times), the extra two inches of height he has on what would be their average. He’d miss the feeling in his chest that he gets when she enters the room after having been away for a bit. He’d miss the ability to grasp her arm, to feel her flick the back of his neck when he says something particularly annoying, to, occassionally, braid her hair. Honestly, he’d miss her pretty face. 

Fitz finally puts his other arm around her. She adjusts her position, picks herself up a bit and places herself firmly on his lap, lets himself rest his chin on her shoulder. Their heads press together, and they stare at some point in the distance. Or, well, Fitz stares at a point in the distance, urging his hands to still so that he doesn’t bother her with their movement, and urging his legs to not fall asleep underneath her. He doesn’t know what she’s staring at, as he’s just barely unable to see her eyes, but he assumes it’s about the same.

His hands are clasped in her lap, and she’s clasped within his arms. Having been friends for so long, there’s a lot between them that they never actually say, so Fitz doesn’t think he needs to say _I love you_ to her, because she more than knows that at this point. But if she’d died, he would have never been able to say it to her again, so he thinks maybe he should make the most of the situation. He should be grateful for the opportunities he has. He opens his mouth and tells her, “I love you.”

He can feel her cheek slide upward into a smile. “I love you, too,” she says, and then she pushes herself off of his lap with what he’s pretty sure is a bit of reluctance. “I should… we should both sleep.”

“Mhm,” Fitz agrees, more on principle than anything, because he’s pretty sure he’s still going to have a fair amount of difficulty getting to bed. He pushes himself up, too, but the leg that had Jemma’s weight on it for longer is entirely pins and needles, and he stumbles. He catches himself on the coffee table, but knocks his ginger ale off in the process.

“Shit,” he whispers frantically. “Shit, shit, Coulson will _kill_ me if I stain something.” 

Fitz drops to his knees to grab the can of soda before it can do any more damage than it’s already done, but so does Jemma, and their heads collide as they both lean in to grab it.

“Ouch,” she says, pulling back and rubbing at her skull. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he tells her, putting a hand on her shoulder to reassure her of her lack of wrongdoing. “My fault, should have watched where I was bending, Jesus _fuck_ this thing flows _fast_ ,” he sighs, picking up the can and depositing it on the coffee table once more. 

Jemma puts her hand over his and squeezes it lightly. When Fitz looks up from the puddle of ginger ale on the floor, she’s smiling at him. And they’re close, very close, and, sure, they were close, closer, before, when Jemma was in his arms and could feel his heart hammering its way into her back in the hopes of getting close, closer, to her own heart, but this time they’re face to face.

“You have nice eyes,” she says. “That’s something I sort of forget to notice after being friends with someone as long as I’ve been friends with you.”

“You’ve been friends with other people as long as you’ve been friends with me?” Fitz asks, and then, a second too late, her compliment registers. “Also, er, thank you. You, ah, you do, too. Have nice eyes, I mean.” Which is very true, and very much not something that he’d be at all secure enough in himself to tell her without her saying it first, so he’s glad she did.

“I have not,” she confirms, lips quirking upwards. 

“Thought so,” he says, nodding. The lighting on the ship isn’t the most flattering, but Jemma still manages to look good in it. 

Suddenly remembering the reason for their being on the ground in the first place, Fitz shifts into mild panic mode and starts scrubbing at the floor of the plane with the bottom of his ratty old S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy Sci-Tech t-shirt. It’s not the most attractive of garments, but it’s comfortable as hell to sleep in, and, apparently, rather decent at ginger ale absorption.

“I’ll—” she jabs a thumb over her shoulder in the vague direction of the kitchen area “—I’ll go grab some paper towels, if you’d like?”

He takes a split second to glance up from his work at look at her. “That’d be brilliant, thank you so much.”

While Jemma pads away on mismatched-sock-clad feet, Fitz does his best with what he has, which is admittedly not that good, and admittedly not that much. She’s only gone a second, though, and when she comes back, Fitz feels a stupid lightness in his chest that he knows is not just due to the fact that she’s bringing with her the salvation of paper towels and protection against the wrath of Coulson and May that he might incur if they find the Bus stained. He just feels a bit more himself when she’s in the room.

She hands off the paper towels to him and he cleans up the last of his mess. There’s still a tiny little bit of a mark left, but he’s hopeful that it’ll fade overnight, or something. Which is not how stains work—he’s sure that, if he asked, Jemma could explain to him the exact chemistry of how stains work, and he’d sincerely enjoy listening to her talk about it—but if he pretends hard enough, maybe it can be.

Fitz shakes the can of ginger ale. “Still a bit left in here. Nice. Do you want any?”

“I’d get my own if I wanted some, don’t worry,” Jemma says. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to not drink sugary drinks before bedtime? It’ll keep you up, you know.”

He shrugs. “I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

“Okay,” Jemma says through a grin. She knocks her shoulder lightly against his. Not in the way that Skye likes to do sometimes, all roughness and an aggressive assertion of the fact that she’s taking up space. Jemma does this more as a gentle reminder that she’s there, that she’s next to him. That she’s, by miracle or by the simple brilliance of her mind, alive. “You _are_ going to bed, aren’t you?” she inquires.

“Of course,” Fitz replies, which is not strictly a lie, because he is planning on heading back to his bunk, though he’s relatively certain he’s not going to be able to get to sleep for at least a few more minutes than is ideal once he gets in bed. “Let me walk you back?”

She rolls her eyes affectionately. _You’re not_ walking me back _if you’re right there, too_ , she doesn’t say, because she doesn’t have to. She hooks her arm through his and tugs him towards the sleeping quarters.

They pause outside the door to Jemma’s quarters. The lights are a lot dimmer here, nearly pure dark as to allow for the most comfort for the people sleeping within, so Fitz can only really make out her shadows, the peaks and valleys of her silhouette. She raises a hand tentatively, then lowers it, then pulls him into a quick, crushing hug, pinning his arms to his side.

He almost staggers backward, but manages to hold himself upright. Though he can’t return her hug, he rests his head on top of hers and hope that that small action is able to properly convey the magnitude of affection and friendship and adoration he feels for her. When she pulls back, she says, “Thanks again, Fitz,” and brushes past him to get to her sleeping quarters.

The door slides behind her with a mechanical-sounding _click_. Fitz takes a breath in, holds it for just a second too long to the point where he can feel an ache in his lungs, and then lets it out through his teeth. He scratches at the back of his head. To no one except the air and the closed door of Jemma Simmons’ room and himself, he says, “I should… I should be getting to bed now.”

There’s a slight indentation in his bedside table, and he places the ginger ale can—now fully drained of its contents—in it, hopeful that the plane doesn’t bank too hard in his sleep and that the can stays firmly on the table. Hopeful that he remembers to throw it out in the morning, too. 

From the sound of it, Skye seems to be properly asleep at this point, which is good, because Fitz is minorly concerned about her inconsistent sleep patterns. He crawls back into bed and tries desperately to clear his mind enough to get to bed.

It’s hard. There’s a lot for him to think about, and Fitz’s natural state is thinking about things as thoroughly as he can, occasionally to the point of absurdity and, okay, mild catastrophization. He’s not panicking now, though. He’s thinking about Jemma, about how good it was to feel her solid underneath his hands, about how good it was to hear her voice, about how much he would have missed her had she been… gone.

Sometimes he forgets that he’s pretty young, and that she is, too. They have a lot of time ahead of them, hopefully. They have a lot of days together—slow ones, attempting to teach themselves to cook something new, and fast ones, working side by side in the lab—in their future. They have a whole life left to live. He’s very glad he’s not going to have to try to figure out how to live it without her.

Fitz turns onto his side, shuts his eyes, and, content for the first time in over twenty-four hours, waits for sleep to come.

**Author's Note:**

> obviously since i have only watched Six Episodes of this show apologies if any of this is like so totally off base. Also i did not know if i should call her simmons or jemma in his head but ultimately went w jemma?. also this is not plot relevant at ALL but since im jewish i want fitz to be jewish so hes jewish now <3 yaaay
> 
> thanks for reading! you can find me on twitter @ kickdshins if you want to see more quality content, and, as always, kudos/comments are greatly appreciated :D


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